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If I were advising someone on a writing career, the deal is this: write. If you get it published, good. If somebody pays you, better, because you have to eat, but the deal is you have to write.

— Nikki Giovanni The Authority of a Writer (2024)

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More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.

The Authority of a Writer (2024)

Poetry is the culture of a people. We are poets even when we don’t write poems; just look at our life, our rhythms, our tenderness, our signifying, our sermons and our songs.

I'm a big fan of the black woman and so I'm always looking at aspects of the black woman--what she's doing and how she does it.

The Authority of a Writer (2024)

History is wonderful. We have so much we can learn if we would quit making ideology out of history, and just deal with what happened…

Nikki Giovanni: Interview (2008)

Politics is personal. That, however, doesn’t mean it’s ideological. It means that one cares about what she or he is doing, what he or she is writing…

Nikki Giovanni: Interview (2008)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Nikki Giovanni (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.